You can really feel the system engage when cornering hard. It almost feels like the back end is sliding because it comes around so nicely.

All I need is a swaybar set and I will be understeer free too. They say it completely eliminates understeer but it doesn't. Not the way audi sets up the rest of the suspension from the factory. Also, you have to be on the gas for the system to work. If you come into a corner too hot you are still gonna plow.

But for an out of the box configuration it is definitely fast as shit.

You can really feel the system engage when cornering hard. It almost feels like the back end is sliding because it comes around so nicely.

All I need is a swaybar set and I will be understeer free too. They say it completely eliminates understeer but it doesn't. Not the way audi sets up the rest of the suspension from the factory. Also, you have to be on the gas for the system to work. If you come into a corner too hot you are still gonna plow.

But for an out of the box configuration it is definitely fast as shit.

Hmm. My ass slides around very nicely and predictably. What surprised me is how easy my friend's '11 328 rotates too. Very controlled, with you as the pivot point - just feed it some gas. Even with traction control on it allows you to walk the rear end around a little. BMWs DSC is far better than my ASC, which i removed. Mine was all-or-none at the slightest sign of wheel spin. DSC even knows which way your steering wheel is pointing does a good job staying out of the way.

I wonder how much benefit there is to this vector system in a car that really hasn't got any understeer to start. On a long fast sweeper it sounds like it might still help. NASCAR could really use something like that.

Hmm. My ass slides around very nicely and predictably. What surprised me is how easy my friend's '11 328 rotates too. Very controlled, with you as the pivot point - just feed it some gas. Even with traction control on it allows you to walk the rear end around a little. BMWs DSC is far better than my ASC, which i removed. Mine was all-or-none at the slightest sign of wheel spin. DSC even knows which way your steering wheel is pointing does a good job staying out of the way.

I wonder how much benefit there is to this vector system in a car that really hasn't got any understeer to start. On a long fast sweeper it sounds like it might still help. NASCAR could really use something like that.

What about F1? Do they use any differential witchery?

Yeah, the ESP in this new S4 is way more permissive than the old systems used to be. You can actually have decent amount of fun before it starts reigning it in. I was pleasantly surprised by that. I think they took lessons from porsche or something. The porsche PSM system even in our older 2004 911 is very good at allowing for fun.

I dunno if they use something like this in F1. It seems like maybe the weight of a system would be a hindrance and they have crazy amounts of power to deal with. Also they already have crazy aero and gigantic slicks so they might not even need it.

Evo has a fairly advanced version; they call it Active Yaw Control. Top Gear had a bit highlighting it on the Evo FQ400 if you want to see it working. Acura's SH-AWD system uses another. Both actually have electromagnetically controlled crap to vary the speed of the axles both up and down, instead of just down like some of the addon braking systems do.

F1 used to. McLaren started things by having a car with two brake pedals after the clutch pedals went away in, I want to say '97 (off the top of my head, not bothering to google) but that got banned... later the same basic thing moved inside the transmission case with active differentials, some variants of which are torque vectoring to where they tank steer, others just vary the LSD clutch lockup. No idea what's current without doing some research, or even if they're still allowed... I mean, they banned traction control...

WRC used to use all sorts of torque vectoring active differential witchery, but that all got banned; I've heard speculation that's why the Subarus stopped being competitive, that Prodrive was using the active diffs to mask some fundamental vehicle dynamics issue. Oh yeah, Delta Wing LeMans weird-thing uses torque vectoring to get it to turn. On pretty much everything else in motorsports, active differentials of any sort are banned. It works excellently done well, but doing it well takes a lot of expensive hardware, lots of maintenance (Moog valves are sensitive to debris) and lots and lots of testing and development to get the mapping correct.

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Everything is a gag...

“We thought it must be possible to make an interesting living messing about with racing cars and engines." -Keith Duckworth

mekilljoydammit - one of the main reasons subaru's stopped being competitive is that the newer generation of impreza's chassis layout fucking sucks for rally. It's balance is all gone to hell. You'll still see older imprezas sometimes, but that's a significant reason for no more factory teams. Of course, you won't hear Subaru say that. They said it was rule changes and cost.

Before the new car; look at results differences between 05 and earlier and 06 and later; they're the same body style. Richard Burns won the driver's championship in '01, and Solberg was competing for event wins as late as 05, making at least the podium most races. 06 and later, with the active diffs banned, suddenly any sort of podium is pretty rare. I've also heard the switch away from exe-tc suspension blamed but I don't have a date for that.

__________________
Everything is a gag...

“We thought it must be possible to make an interesting living messing about with racing cars and engines." -Keith Duckworth